Gracing The Stage

I’m out of the country until Tuesday May 5th, so the next weekly update won’t be until May 8th. Yes, there’s going to be a dark week; my apologies to anyone whose show is affected, but it’s just too much work to do completely on-line – and I plan to be spending a fair amount of time pool-side and elsewhere. I’ll try to keep the calendar updated, so I’m not leaving my faithful readers completely in the lurch.

To keep you coming back… here are some videos and mp3s of local events of note that happened over the last week or two, or are happening in the next week. I’m actually considering making this a permanent part of the update, as a chance to post some of the internet goodness I haven’t yet figured out how to gracefully include on the site.

Below all the video and audio goodness are a collection of links I use frequently to write my updates (they’ll form the nucleus of the Links page I mean to post – someday), that you might utilize to plan your week without my guidance.

In Comedy, The Subway Series that Ghost Jail Theatre and The Sketchersons collaborated on was a riot. There’s no video available (as far as I know) of either show, but here’s a GJT favourite of mine; Ghost Jail cast member Fraz Wiest (who was qouted exclusively in the Toronto Star article about the show, to Sketcherson cast member Brendan Halloran’s comic chagrin) doing a written on the spot monologue about natural disasters:

Also, those of us who rode the subway were treated to an song written and performed by Sketcherson cast member Daryn McIntyre. In commemoration of the recent passing of comedy legend Bea Arthur, I’m posting a YouTube clip of a song Daryn wrote about her and the other Golden Girls. It starts off familiar, then veers off wonderfully:

In Theatre, “Appetite” closed this past weekend at Theatre Passe Muraille. The clever folks at Volcano Theatre filmed a nifty little promo video that made the rounds on the interweb. The show is going on tour, and may be back again (fingers crossed). Here’s their “advertisement” (and watch it in “HQ”, as you should whenever possible):

Also in theatre, but this time, upcoming: The Summerworks Launch Party is happening May 3rd (one day off this past week’s update). As well as all the great theatre works being teased and previewed, there’s a couple of musical guests, including Nils Edenloff of The Rural Alberta Advantage (Who’ve just been signed to the Saddle Creek label!) .

Here’s Nils, Amy Cole, and Paul Banwatt in studio, singing “Edmonton“:

The Rural Alberta Advantage – “Edmonton” – HearYa Live Session 4/1/09 from HearYa.com on Vimeo.

While we’re on bands Paul drums with, Woodhands played an incredible set at the Phoenix last weekend, and videographer Jared Sales has put up a couple of great videos of the live performance. Here’s Paul and Dan Werb, jamming out (and rapping!) on “I Can’t See Straight” (again, HD is the way to watch this):

OK, so, this Thursday (tonight), There’s a whole bunch of CD releases to choose from. I’d say that you should pick one based on your mood. If you want to hear some beautiful, soulful folk music from Tamara Lindeman (also a member of Entire Cities, who I wrote about a fair bit in this post), you should head to the Tranzac Club for The Weather Station’s LP release.

The Weather Station – East

Simon Borer, Tamara Lindeman, and Dwight Schenk of The Weather Station. Photo by Meredith Cheesbrough.

If you’re feeling like really working up a sweat, consider Green Go, who are having their CD release at Wrongbar:

Green Go – Put Your Specs On

Green Go! Photo by Blaise Misiek.

Hot Docs opens this Thursday, too: it took an awful lot of on-line sleuthing, but I finally managed to find something other than the famous “Winnebago Man” clip – a piece filmed at SXSW about “Winnebago Man“, the documentary, one of the opening night films:

Hindenburg

You’re still reading? Really? Oh, right! I promised you some resource links.

Besides the two weeklies (Now Toronto, and Eye Weekly), and the two city blogs (Torontoist and Blog TO), there are a few other people and sites around town who post informative listings.

- In Music, Jen Polk’s HistoryJen does a weekly update similar to mine, consisting of pretty much EVERY local show under $10 happening in Toronto. Carl Wilson’s Zoilus Gig guide is a good one, too; not comprehensive, but easy to read, and tends to hit the good stuff. The most comprehensive listing for local stuff is, of course, the “Show Thread” on Stillepost.ca; if you’re looking for touring shows, if it isn’t listed on stillepost, or if they aren’t selling tickets for the show at Rotate This or Soundscapes, it likely isn’t worth seeing.

- In Theatre, there’s no Toronto specific web site that does theatre listings, though the livewithculture.ca site, run by the City of Toronto, is a decent resource for the arts in general in the city. There are quite a few good blogs about theatre in Toronto, like Praxis Theatre and Play Anon; there’s also Plank Magazine, which covers Toronto and Vancouver. The best on-line theatre resource in town, in my opinion,  is Johnny Walker’s “Drama Club” over on Torontoist (and I’d have said that even before he did that nifty piece about Gracing the Stage and the website launch shows).

- In Comedy, there’s VERY little that isn’t self promotion by comics, troupes, and venues online. But theatre writer Amanda Campbell’s blog, The Way I See It, is getting pretty good at picking out some good comedy around town, as well as theatre.

In Film, well, most of that comes from reading the more general resources already mentioned – and the individual sites for the rep cinemas (which I’ve previous listed in this post). For film listings and basic info about Toronto’s cinemas, there’s a wealth of sites out there, but I tend to use Cinema Clock – it’s basic, but it has what you need. The thing about film is that it really is a global market (and community), so the best sites about films aren’t Toronto-centric. That said, That Night in Toronto (I do have a FEW contemporaries around town) currently has a little mini-guide up about Hot Docs…

Finally, the most authoritative on-line resource for performing arts events in Toronto is Facebook – go figure, huh? But it’s the easiest way for companies and troupes to promote their work with minimal effort; it’s like a free individual website for an event that takes a minute to create. Any show or event that DOESN’T post an event listing on Facebook obviously doesn’t feel the need to inform any of the more than a million Facebook users in the GTA. Have a look at all the links in the past few week’s updates; chances are, those event invites were written by troupes and performers worth having a look at, joining their group, and keeping abreast of their work.

OK. Have I earned a vacation? I hope so. See you all in a week or so!

(Photographer Skye Regan, who’s been doing a terrific job documenting Impromptu Splendor through her camera lens, has uploaded a treasure trove of pictures of the GTS launch show’s performers to her Flicker account. You can view Skye’s photos of the launch party shows, and more, here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/skyesthelimit/ . Saturday night was also captured on camera by Albert Lee, who will hopefully have his pictures available just as soon as he gets his website up and running. Enjoy! – Steve)

What a weekend it was. 2 nights, 2 venues, 24 acts (including hosts Iron Cobra and The Flirts), more than 8 hours of entertainment, minus two 20 minute intermissions, and a lot of very impressed audience members, many of whom left talking excitedly about acts they’d not known before these shows.

Julie Tepperman played anxious bride Rachel in Convergence's Theatre's side-splitting excerpt from their play "Yichud/Seclusion", Friday night at Bread and Circus (this and all subsequent photos in this post are by Skye Regan).

Both nights had two things in common:

- it seemed like every third person in the doors of the venues exclaimed “this place is great! Why haven’t I been here before?” So, between that and the great advance press the shows got, my tertiary goal of promoting the venues certainly seems to have been accomplished;

- The shows couldn’t have gone any better on stage, save for going a little long both nights (the shows both started around 9:20pm and wrapped up around 1:30am), and for an occasionally hair-raising mic at Night 1.

Maylee judges a "fierce" competition of pose-offs during the Sweatshop Hop, Saturday at Comedy Bar.

Night One at Bread and Circus had a respectable audience turnout, and a great media and VIP turnout; in the audience were 3 staff writers from Torontoist, 2 from Blog T.O., reps from Plank Magazine, the Toronto Music Blog Collective, and Stillepost, and at least three music promoters. I was a bit of a stress case, worrying about off-stage issues, but it all worked out, off stage and on, chiefly due to the efforts of my volunteer coordinator Deborah Robinson and her crew behind the scenes, and on stage courtesy of stage technician Gordon Peck and his right hand man Craig Pickthorne (asking Deb and Gord for help with the shows was by far the smartest thing I did, logistically).

If Friday was a little touch and go at times (though that never showed on stage), Saturday’s Night Two at Comedy Bar went as smooth as silk. There’d been considerably more advance tickets sold for Saturday’s show, and the crowd turned up despite a pretty intense snowstorm. I was relaxed enough to get up there in my shirt and tie and do some ridiculously fun aerobics moves with headliners The Sweatshop Hop, and there were still enough people at Comedy Bar after 1am that the afterparty with The Bob Kerr Singers had an appreciative audience ( birthday boy Bob’s guests were Hawkmail, Adam Christie, Megan Fraser, and Levi Macdougall, who joined Maylee Todd and Ryan V. Hays as one of the elite few who performed both nights).

Below is a full roll call of the performers, in order of appearance (I encourage you to visit their online homes), and a few more choice photos of the night, all courtesy of crack snapshooter Skye Regan. Skye’s pics, and Albert Lee‘s from Night 2, will be up online in a gallery format of some form or another very soon (I’ll update this post with the links when they’re posted) . Read more…

It is with great pride and pleasure that I announce a weekend of top notch music, comedy, and theatre, to officially launch this website. Yes, we’ve been posting daily (or just about) since January 4th, but on February 20th and 21st, gracingthestage.ca will be announcing its presence in the real world in a BIG way, with two nights showcasing some of Toronto’s best music, comedy, and theatre artists, at two of the newest and most exciting performance spaces in the city.

JUST ANNOUNCED: two  new acts have been added to the bills, one per night! Friday, the music line-up will be bolstered by the addition of Tonka and Puma, AKA April and Dan from Hooded Fang! Saturday, the evening will continue well past midnight with performances from The Bob Kerr Singers, led by stand-up extraordinaire Bob Kerr. Bob, who will be celebrating his birthday that night, is well under way to meeting a New Years resolution to perform more than 100 stand up shows in 2009; the Bob Kerr Singers are, well, whoever BOB invites to share the stage with him!

Maylee Todd leads members of Toronto's indie rock community in a late night, drunken aerobicise routine at the second ever Sweatshop Hop. In this picture are members of Entire Cities, Gravity Wave, Woodhands, Henri Faberge & The Adorables, the Bicycles, sketch troupe Bull Hooey, and more, including yours truly (photo by Joseph Fuda).

Here are the straight facts:

gracingthestage.ca Launch Party Night 1, w/ Entire Cities, The Williamson Playboys, Gravity Wave, Levi MacDougall, Maylee Todd, 10,000 to Flight, Convergence Theatre, Tonka and Puma, and Carnegie Hall, with hosts Iron Cobra, Friday Feb. 20th @ Bread & Circus (299 Augusta Ave), 8pm doors, 9pm showtime.

AND

gracingthestage.ca Launch Party Night 2, w/ Peter Katz, The Remainders, Maylee & Slippers’ Sweatshop Hop, Pat Thornton, Melissa D’Agostino, Makesi Arthur, Jehan Khoorshed, The Bob Kerr Singers, and Kathleen Phillips, with hosts The Flirts, Saturday Feb. 21st @ Comedy Bar (945 Bloor St. W.), 8pm doors, 9pm showtime.

Tickets for both nights are $12 in advance @ their respective venues and at record store Soundscapes (572 College St.), and $15 @ the door.

The venues (Bread and Circus, and Comedy Bar) were chosen for the fact that they are both artist-owned and operated; neither space is particularly large, and tickets will go FAST. Don’t wait long to pick yours up!

(Edit: the following tune is not produced by anyone affliated with Maylee & Slippers’ Sweatshop Hop, but it comes Maylee-approved – have a listen to get in the mood!)

Neon Neon (feat. Fat Lip and Yo Majesty!) – Sweatshop

This week’s update includes three new theatre premieres (“Lady in the Red Dress“, “Ubuntu“, and “Stranger“), A Sketchersons radio taping, a burlesque carnival, Chris Gibb’s “The Power of Ignorance“, and FREE or cheap shows by Oh No Forest Fires, The Schomberg Fair, Sebastien Grainger & The Mountains, and Hooded Fang.

Click the “more” tab to read the full week’s picks for theatre, comedy, film, and music! Read more…

Frankly, I find it shocking the website has been up for over a week, and this is my first music post. I’d planned to write posts about last weekend’s Rock n’ Roll Anniversary, Singing Lamb Launch, and Out of This Spark shows, but the update, and the new Event Calendar (move your mouse over it, why dontcha, and see what happens!) ate up all my waking time. So the next two days are going to be all about the music, starting with Wombat Wednesdays.

(That’s Basement Arms playing the Tranzac Main Hall in the vid above – Dwight Schenk lets loose with his signature growl at about the 4:45 mark).

(Ozzie marsupials, snakeskin motherf–ckers, a wave of gravy, and more, after the break.) Read more…